Council
by elitemassacre6
Summary: It's taken years, but Rachel finally decides it's time she goes to talk to a professional about everything that's happened to her. Warning: mention of rape. this is AU.


A/N: Found this in a random digital sticky note in my phone. Was just a single paragraph and I spent the last twenty minutes fleshing it out.

It had taken a long time for her to get here. Too long probably...definitely. She looked up at Dr Cole, they'd been sitting there twenty minutes without any words or eye contact.

"Aren't you going to ask me some questions...or something to get me to talk? Isn't that how this works?" She was frustrated already and she tried to calm herself, finally relaxing a bit when the hand holding hers squeezed gently.

"Would that help you? If not then no, Rachel. That's not how this works. But if yes, why don't you explain why it's easier for you to be here with Santana rather than without her? Why does she need to wear those? How can she make this easier for you if she can't hear anything we say?"

"She makes me feel better. Calms me down just by being here. I don't think I could do this if she wasn't. It's that simple, Dr. Cole. I need her here so she said she'd be here. That's the kind of person she is." Rachel leaned back on the couch, tucked her socked feet under her and then looked over at Santana's kind, dark, eyes. She ran her hand through black hair and smiled at her with the love that had taken her years to accept, to let into her heart.

"She's a good person." The doctor said, typing into her Macbook.

"Too good a person. Too good for me. It's fucked really. I know how selfish I'm being. I know she deserves someone better, but I know she won't leave, and I know I don't want her to. I can't help but feel like no one could love her like I do. But then i think about how I treated her... The things I did and said, how it affected her? How could I ever deserve her?"

"Being with someone isn't about deserving them, I think. It's about loving them as much as you can for as long as you can. Protecting them, taking care of them, supporting them. Just being there." Eliza couldn't help but notice even from the last twenty minutes they'd been sitting together that these two girls more than loved each other. They needed each other. She worried for them, honestly. Were something to happen to Santana or Rachel, she wondered how the other would even be able to function.

"Yea, I guess you're right. I just...I wanted to come here because I thought it was time I dealt with the issues that turned me into the type of person that could hurt her in the first place. It's been years since it all happened and I still haven't dealt with any of it. I'm sure you've read the file."

"Yes, I have. But i'd prefer you explain it all to me from your perspective. I find it's difficult to tell someone's life story with words and sentences and none of the experience or emotion." Rachel nodded, reaching over to her still silent and patient girlfriend and pulled off the noise cancelling headphones she'd been wearing for the last half hour.

"Baby, what's going on? I thought...I thought you didn't want me to hear?"

"Yea babe, but there's part of my story that you still don't know and I thought...I think you deserve to." Santana nodded and leaned back into the couch with Rachel's fingers in between her own.

"When I was eleven I was snatched up from the street in front of my school by a man. He kept me in his basement and raped me more times than I could count. I only barely understood what was happening. He kept me hostage for a year, barely feeding me. One day someone came to the door, and he wasn't expecting it, so he left my cage unlocked and the basement door open. I walked out of the cage and there was a gun and I grabbed it and flipped off the safety. I got back in the cage and when he came down and went to lock it I shot him. I shot the whole clip into his chest and his blood was all over me and I ran up the stairs and out the front door. I didn't know where I was and it was just turning dark outside so I knocked on his neighbors door and this woman came to the door and she called the police for me." Tears streamed from the latina's dark eyes and Rachel leaned over to wipe them away.

"It's okay, baby. Everything's okay, don't cry." Santana threw herself into her girlfriends strong arms and Rachel held her tight.

"You didn't tell me that you were kidnapped and...and raped. You just told me you'd been taken from your mom. Why?"

"Baby I just didn't want to scare you away. It'd not exactly a happy story and I didn't want you to realize how fucked up I am and run away from me, I'm sorry." her girlfriend shook her head, burrowing deeper , head now on Rachel's chest.

"I wouldn't have. I couldn't, you know that."

"Okay, babe." The doctor frowned. It was obvious that Rachel had some serious problems with regards to her past and how it could or would affect her relationship with what she saw as the only person she had left who loved her.

"They wouldn't give me back to my mom. It had been a year that i'd been missing and she'd fallen apart. They said she wasn't mentally fit. So I was in the foster system, in different houses, for weeks before my dads found me. After a month they adopted me. I never thought I'd have been comfortable around men again. But they were such good people and I felt like I was okay for once. I was happy, honestly. But there was an accident and they died. I was fourteen. I somehow convinced Ohio's lackluster version of child services that my aunt was going to move in and take care of me. My dads had left me the house and the cars and more money than I know what to do with. But I was alone again. I couldn't help but start to feel like everyone I cared about got hurt or went crazy or...I don't know. I was afraid to get close to anyone."

"What happened next? With the exception of a few misdemeanor charges, your file ends there."

" I met Santana." The psychiatrists iPhone alarm went off and she frowned.

"Next time?"

"Sure, doc. I'll be here if you will. C'mon babe." Eliza watched as Rachel slowly disconnected from her girlfriend then pulled her up and slid a slim arm around her waist. Both girls disappeared out of the door and the doctor relaxed back into her chair. She found herself inpatient for next week. She hated to sound like a shrink, but the case was interesting. And troubling, still. She couldn't help but worry about the obvious co-dependence of the two girls.


End file.
